


When One Door Closes

by Sketchup



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Arcanaverse, Drunkenness, First Meetings, Gen, Heartbreak, The Arcana Next Generation, The Rowdy Raven Tavern (The Arcana), meet-not-cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24767623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sketchup/pseuds/Sketchup
Summary: Wren is heartbroken when she finds her crush with someone else...little does she know that right around the corner might be the start of a whole new adventure.
Kudos: 2





	When One Door Closes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LazyVoyager](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LazyVoyager/gifts).



_Can you actually die from a broken heart?_ Wren wondered, as the pain from hers caused her to clutch at her chest with one hand. The other was shoved against her mouth, so that her sobs were muffled from beyond the stable doors. It hurt. It hurt more than anything she had ever felt in eighteen years. Even when everyone told her it was impossible, even when they’d almost forbidden her feelings, that had only been a fraction of this pain she felt now.

She wanted to slide down the wood of the stall; to curl up into a ball and disappear into the floor. She wished she had never come here in the first place, but what then? That wouldn’t make it any less true.

Maybe it hurt--maybe it was killing her--but at least she knew. Wren hated to feel like a fool, and the idea that _he_ might think she was one added just another layer to her utter misery. 

She couldn’t stay there, that much was obvious. Who knew when they would come in from the paddock and notice her? There was no way she could talk to them; not like this, not now. If he saw her like this, she might die for real, she thought. And while there was some solace in that idea, the horror of it won out and had her scrubbing off her face and adjusting her clothes. A quick glance assured her that no one was standing near the front of the barn and so, clutching her sketchbook to her chest, Wren made her way down the cobbled path back to the large gates of Vesuvia’s palace grounds.

No one stopped her, and, she hoped, no one looked too close at her splotchy skin or red-rimmed eyes. Stray tears spilled over every time her focus slipped, allowing an errant thought of him to sneak in, scattering her emotions all over again like children tossing rocks at precariously-stacked milk bottles. Her eyes stung from the salt, her sleeves wet from mopping up her face. The sun was high in the noon-time sky, making her sweaty and more miserable as she nodded at the gate-guards on duty.

They nodded back without looking twice. Maybe they charitably blamed her appearance on the heat.

Once she was at the bottom of the steps, back into Vesuvia proper, she realized she had no idea where to go or what to do next. There didn’t seem to be any ideas for what should happen now, and there was no one she could talk to who hadn’t made it clear that this was the way it ought to be. There was never meant to be a ‘them’--they were cousins, no matter that they weren’t blood-related--and that was the end of that. Mom, Dad, Felix. All of them told her again and again that she needed to let go of these feelings. That she was young, and they would fade with time. 

She _hated_ that.

_Am I so young that I don’t know what my own feelings are?_ she thought vehemently, but that anger dissolved quickly as her bottom lip trembled, more tears threatening to spill forth. And now she was in the Heart District, and there were people passing all around, and someone was bound to take notice of her if she broke down sobbing in the streets. She would look dirty and sweaty and poor; shabby against all the finery of this classiest district, and they would whisper about her.

Even the thought was a nightmare.

And so she refused to let herself think about anything as she forced herself to walk, marching numbly through the streets like a mannequin given life. No thoughts. No feelings. Only action, with one directive: and, as the day was beginning to hit evening, she arrived at her vague destination.

The Rowdy Raven.

The Raven wasn’t exactly a classy joint, but she breathed a sigh of relief being in the South End where the people wouldn’t jeer at her rumpled appearance. If anything, she was probably dressed too _neatly_ for the Raven, but that would assume most of the patrons weren’t already three or four Salty Bitters into the night and remained capable of seeing clearly.

At last, with a reluctantly-bought mug of the stuff in hand, Wren settled into a seat in the back, where the sheer adrenaline began to wear off again in favor of the painful thud in her chest that reminded her she was still alive, and still capable of feeling this loss. 

_He never even knew how I felt about him_ , she thought, her face falling into her hands as it crumpled again, her shoulders shuddering under the weight of emotion. The music, a live ensemble of only-slightly-drunk South-Enders who happened to own instruments, drowned out some of the sounds of her sorrow. The drunkenness of those around her handled the rest. _I never even got the chance to tell him. Would it have made a difference?_ That was part of what killed her, the scene replaying in her mind. 

Walking into the stable, breathless from hurrying, eager to show off some new drawings. Looking around, confused, wondering where he was. He was always at the stables this time of day. Almost calling out as she started to step outside--then seeing them. A smile starting across her face, and then falling steeply as she realized he was with someone. A gorgeous someone, with miles of summer-sun blonde hair, blue eyes, apricot-tan skin, and curves for days. She stepped back into the shadow of the barn, afraid that they might have noticed; afraid that they wouldn’t notice. That they were trapped in a private world all their own. Seeing how happy they looked together. How natural. The way she gently wrapped an arm around his waist; the way he had to lean down from his tall height, an embarrassed-yet-pleased flush on his face as he pressed lips to the top of her head. Wren couldn’t look away; she stared with intensity at this intimate display even though she didn’t want to. Even though it felt wrong to spy on something so tender. The only sound in her ears was the blood rushing through them, and the heavy sound of her heart dropping and crumbling into her stomach.

All of that played across her closed eyes again and again, vividly re-lived, and she felt her heart break at the end every time like it was the first.

_It isn’t fair,_ she thought between hiccuping sobs, _how can he love her? How can he know he likes her when he doesn’t know about me? I could be...I could have been the one. He doesn’t_ know.

At some point, her cup was empty, and without paying much attention, someone came by her table to refill it. That happened a few more times, and suddenly it hurt less. Her stomach hurt *more*, but that was a preferable pain. When she finally stood up, everything ached from crying, and her vision blurred a bit. Maybe one too many Salty Bitters, but numbing the pain helped her to think. As she stepped out into the night air, she felt refreshed.

She had also come up with a plan.

It was a good plan, she thought; by the time she had reached South End Market, empty now in the dead of night, she was convinced it was a great plan. She would go home now and pack, and the next day she was going to run away. Well. _Run away_ made it sound juvenile and petty. She wasn’t going to run away, per say. She was an adult! She was moving on with her life, somewhere else. Away from Vesuvia, and the palace, and those stables. 

She would go somewhere far--maybe Venterre, or Zadith, or even Prakra!--and start fresh. She’d find a job as a tailor’s apprentice, or a seamstress, and she would work her way up. She’d find someone to show her sketches to who would appreciate her design talent, and she would become the fashion designer for someone important. They would debut her clothes to the whole world, and then at last Wren would finally become the kind of woman he had always seemed to admire--someone elegant, poised, commanding and beautiful. Someone rich, someone with standing. Someone who _was_ somebody.

That thought occupied and comforted her as she cut through the market, but her drunken mind missed a step, and in the dark she went spilling across the dirt and stone of the square, her sketchbook falling open and pictures flying every which-way. 

It hurt, she knew, but the indignity of the whole day hurt worse. Wasn’t there _anything_ that could go her way? Cut her some slack? Hadn’t the world dealt her a harsh enough blow for one lifetime? She wanted to cry again, but she didn’t have time to do more than whimper at her scratched-up knees and palms before she had to jump up, chasing her pictures before they could be blown away. 

As inebriated as she was, it was a struggle--the sketchbook pages spun away from her, and more than once she had to stop and hold her head to keep from feeling like she was falling off the surface of the world. Snot and tears ran down her face, and were smudged with blood and dirt and she frantically tried to brush the hair from her face as it escaped from her braid. At last she had secured all but one of the pictures, but that one was a doozy--the late-night summer breeze had picked it up and carried it up into the thatch of a rooftop, where there was no way Wren, at all of five-foot-nine, was going to be able to reach it.

She knew she should just give up. A small, tired voice of reason stamped its foot and screamed that at her from the back of her mind even as she stumbled around, dragging a box from an alley and arranged it underneath the eaves of the building. It wasn’t quite enough, so she huffed and puffed to drag over one more milk crate and a mostly-empty wine cask, hoisting them up onto the box with no small amount of effort. By this point her stomach heaved dangerously, but she was so close…

And so Wren climbed up the box. She scrambled up the crate and barrel, her hands walking over themselves as she used the wall for support. She stretched out one arm...and was _just_ out of reach. She bit her lip, her mouth dry, and stretched on her toes. The sketch fluttered, as if taunting her, and she let out a curse and stretched out further.

_Almost_ …

And then she felt a tug as her shoe snagged the edge of her skirt. 

She wobbled,violently jerking to right herself, and she felt her precarious tower pitch over in response. Throwing out her hands, she tried to grab the eave of the roof, but it slipped through her grasping fingers.

Then...there was the sensation of falling into something solid. Not like a body hitting the ground, but instead, Wren felt two extremely sturdy arms practically pluck her from the air like a ragdoll, swinging her up and out of the way of the clattering mess of barrels and boxes. It reminded her, oddly enough, of the sensation she used to get when her father would swing her over his head when she was a toddler, pretending that she was a bird flying through the sky. 

“Fly, Ren! Fly!” he would say, chuckling all the while, as her mother stood in the doorway of their cabin quarters, shaking her head but smiling. Then mom would wave her hand and do the magic, and both Wren _and_ her father would suddenly be floating through the air, weightless and free and laughing.

“--you okay? Hey, can you hear me? Did you hit your head, or…?” vaguely, Wren was aware of someone talking to her; that her feet had touched solid ground again, but she couldn’t seem to do much more than loll her head upwards to blink at whoever it was. She didn’t recognize the brawny, muscular man with a face full of freckles that was staring down at her in concern. She opened her mouth to reassure him that she was fine…

...And promptly bent forward, vomiting all over the street.

_I hate salty bitters,_ she thought as she did, _they burn even worse coming back up than they do going down._

It was her last conscious thought, for which she was exceedingly grateful. She had, quite frankly, had enough of that day to last a lifetime.


End file.
